Comments #9584130:

@rphb
And why exactly does all of this require colonies? Couldn't the same have been achieved through trade, exchange, missionaries and other means which do not require bringing in a bunch of guns and soldiers, killing everyone who opposes you until there is no one left willing to oppose you and then forcing the rest to do your bidding. Japan sure seems to be doing fine for themselves and they were never colonized.

This is probably a good time to point out that the arrival of Europeans did not, in fact, stop slavery. In fact, one could argue it increased slavery, what with the Europeans first enslaving the American Indians and then shipping millions of Africans to the new world as slaves. Were the Africans practicing slavery themselves? Sure, but the Europeans did not do anything to stop them until the mid-1800s, and the African slave trade from 1500s onward - along with all the related wars in the area - sure were stimulated by the massive increase in demand of slaves by the Europeans. Not that Europe was any kind of peaceful utopia itself at this time.

Not that Christianity was all about peace, harmony and civilization at the time of colonialism or before, either. 1500s to late 1600s, after all, saw war after war being fought by Christians against other Christians on the pretext of those Christians being the wrong kind of Christians. Catholic against Protestant, Orthodox against Catholic and Protestant against Orthodox were major divides in Europe at the time and blood was shed over this. Now, one could argue that all of this bloodshed merely used religion as an excuse in a struggle for power, but that exact same argument can be made for the role of religion in colonization.

Oh, and I am not sure why you had to bring socialism into the mix. Perhaps you saw my comment as being somehow inherently leftist in its view of colonialism? I can assure you that many non-socialist people, myself included, do in fact hold these view. Furthermore I never said anything about capitalism in my previous comment either, as far as I can remember. Why exactly are you bringing all of this up?